Party balloons carry Oregon man to Idaho town

CAMBRIDGE, Idaho – Using his trusty BB gun to help him return to earth, 48-year-old gas station owner Kent Couch realized his boyhood dream Saturday of flying a lawn chair rigged with helium-filled party balloons more than 200 miles across the Oregon high desert to land in a farm field in Idaho.

Couch created a sensation in the tiny farming community of Cambridge, Idaho, where he touched down safely in an empty pasture after lifting off from Bend, Ore., and was soon greeted by dozens of people who gave him drinks of water, local plumber Mark Hetz said.

“My wife works at the City Market,” said Hetz. “She called and said, ‘The balloon guy in the lawn chair just flew by the market, and if you look out the door you can see him.’

“We go outside to look and lo and behold there he is.”

Sandi Barton, 58, who has lived her whole life in this town of about 300, said she and her brother-in-law were the first ones to reach Couch and shook his hand.

“Not much happens in Cambridge,” she said, adding that about half the town turned out.

“He came right over our pea field,” she said.

She said Couch gave some of his balloons to local children.

Couch had covered about 235 miles in about nine hours after lifting off with the dawn from his gas station riding in a green lawn chair rigged with a rainbow array of more than 150 giant party balloons.

“If I had the time and money and people, I’d do this every weekend,” Couch said before getting into the chair. “Things just look different from up there. You’re moving so slowly. The best thing is the peace, the serenity.”

Couch’s wife, Susan, said he was crazy, but she wanted to go with him next time.

“It’s never been a dull moment since I married him,” she said.

This was Couch’s third balloon flight. In 2006, Couch had to parachute out after popping too many balloons. And last year he flew 193 miles to the sagebrush of northeastern Oregon, short of his goal.

“I’m not stopping till I get out of state,” he said.

To that end, he ordered more balloons. Each balloon gives four pounds of lift. The chair was about 400 pounds, and Couch and his parachute 200 more.

He carried a Red Ryder BB gun and a blow gun equipped with steel darts to shoot down balloons. He also had a pole with a hook for pulling in balloons, a parachute in case anything went wrong, a handheld Global Positioning System device with altimeter, a satellite phone, and two GPS tracking devices – one for him, the other for the chair, which got away in the wind as he landed last year.